Name: Drawing life
ISBN: 9780684839127

Drawing life

On June 24, 1993, David Gelernter opened a package that exploded, blowing off most of his right hand and damaging his hearing, eyesight, and chest. Ironically, the perpetrator, the technology-phobic "mad genius" we know as the Unabomber, managed to punish one of the very few people who are deeply skeptical about computers and openly critical of technology. Perhaps the greater irony is that the bomb meant to destroy a man's life remade it, and the wounds meant to break his spirit only strengthened it. Now, in this haunting memoir, Gelernter makes a metaphor of himself, seeing in his own near-death and recovery the same disfigurement and promise for American society as a whole. As he ponders his own spiritual condition and the healing power he found in family, religion, community, and art, he critiques the American soul and its devaluing of these very treasures. Instead of teaching and lauding the virtues of courage, critical thinking, and good judgment, Americans have made a media circus out of crime. We are so busy peeking pruriently into the twisted minds of madmen that we have forgotten the acts of violence are not significant because they tickle our bloodlust, but because they force us to rethink our priorities. In a power analysis of the media's response to his experience, for example, Gelernter points out that the Unabomber was described as a "genius, " as "sick, " as "fascinating, " but never as evil.

What Hacker News says

cafardJun 2020

The computer scientist David Gelernter wrote Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber about his experience.

thread

mbgaxyzJan 2017

Wikipedia:

In the 1980s, he made seminal contributions to the field of parallel computation, specifically the tuple space coordination model, as embodied by the Linda programming system (named for Linda Lovelace, an actress in the porn movie Deep Throat, mocking Ada's tribute to Ada Lovelace).[6] Bill Joy cites Linda as the inspiration for many elements of JavaSpaces and Jini.[7]

On June 24, 1993, Gelernter was severely injured opening a mail bomb sent by the Unabomber. He recovered from his injuries, but his right hand and eye were permanently damaged.[8] He chronicled the ordeal in his 1997 book Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber.

He helped found the company Mirror Worlds Technologies, which in 2001 released Scopeware software using ideas from his 1992 book Mirror Worlds. Gelernter believed that computers can free users from being filing clerks by organizing their data.

In 2003, he became a member of the National Council on the Arts.[11]

In October 2016, he wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal endorsing Donald Trump for President, calling Hillary Clinton "as phony as a three-dollar bill," and saying that Barack Obama "has governed like a third-rate tyrant."

Gelernter's book Mirror Worlds (1991) "prophesied the rise of the World Wide Web."[14] Bill Joy, founder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, says Gelernter is "one of the most brilliant and visionary computer scientists of our time."[14] The New York Times called him a computer science "rock star".

thread

maxawaytoolongOct 2010

Interestingly, he was a victim of the Unabomber.

From Wikipedia:

In 1993, Gelernter was critically injured opening a mailbomb sent by Theodore Kaczynski, who at that time was an unidentified but violent opponent of technology, dubbed by the press as "the Unabomber".[2] He recovered from his injuries but his right hand and eye were permanently damaged. He chronicled the ordeal in his 1997 book Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber.

thread